


From Eden

by alchemystique



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4635894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Beth is old enough to remember the feel of filtered cool air on her face, the hum of power lines overhead, the warmth of a hot shower and the ease of a cell phone in her hand. Old enough to remember it, old enough to miss it."</p>
<p>- Beth is tired of being treated like a delicate flower, so she finds someone willing to teach her a thing or two about survival. Post-apocalypse AU, minus the zombies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. high notes, eyes closed, holding on

**Author's Note:**

> an: This was supposed to be a one shot. It was. It honestly was. I thought I could finish up my thoughts on this au in under 8,000 words, but somehow I’m not surprised that Beth Greene couldn’t really sum up this story with so little room to ruminate. 
> 
> This story is heavily influenced by every post-apocalypse story I’ve ever read or watched, but this particular “end of the world” scenario is reminiscent of “Revolution”. I wanted a world that was rough and hard, but for the purposes of this slow burn I needed a more stationary environment. 
> 
> Title is in reference to the Hozier song of the same name, which is such a bethyl song I want to scream, although this particular lyric was the inspiration for this entire story: 
> 
> I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door

Beth is old enough to remember the feel of filtered cool air on her face, the hum of power lines overhead, the warmth of a hot shower and the ease of a cell phone in her hand. Old enough to remember it, old enough to miss it. 

She wonders what it’s like for the kids here, now, the ones born eight, nine years ago now, who’ve never tasted ice cream from a carton, never felt the buzz of electricity or seen the insides of a computer lighting screens and connecting to a billion people all at once. Wonders how they’ll grow up different, how they’ll raise their kids. 

She’s known this world almost half her life, but most days it still seems strange to her.

\------

She still sees the farm, sometimes, when she closes her eyes and tries to remember the sound of her mothers singing or the warmth of her fathers smile. Sees the rickety porch she’d learned to walk on, sees the big windows and the rails of the widows walk, white siding and chimney stacks. Eight years and she can still picture the peeling paint and hear the way the screen door squeaked when it opened. 

She can still remember the taste of ash in her mouth as she ran from the house engulfed in flames, pictures curling in cracked frames and Maggie screaming behind her, can still remember the sight of big, hulking men bearing down on them, hardly a quiver to their stares as her Daddy’d raised a shotgun to their faces.

Fourteen. She’d been fourteen when her world crumbled to pieces and she’d been sure, in that moment, that she was dead and her family with her. 

But then, not everyone had made it out. Her momma, Shawn, even that boy Jimmy from down the road - when Rick Grimes had rode in with his group like a white knight they’d already lost people, and Beth sometimes wonders why she wasn’t one of them.

\------

The settlement is much farther north than her family’s little farm in Senoia, thick forest surrounding the rows of houses on one side, the town square where the shop fronts nestle in. It’s not much - but they had an architect, a few farmers, young men with strong arms and women with steel backs. Unbending. Unbreaking. Those were the types Beth always knew would survive this. Lori Grimes with her heavy voice and her watching eyes, Carol Peletier with her shorn hair and her pursed lips, even Maggie, eighteen when the lights went off and the world fell into chaos - she was always the strong one, the independent one. The type of girl who’d climb the drain pipes and sneak out to drink whiskey in the back of some college boys truck bed, and then break his nose if he tried to get fresh.

And mostly it is those types - there’s a few girls close to Beth’s age here, most of them mean and hard and out for blood. It’s Beth who stands out - Beth who used to sing at the harvest festival every year, Beth who still smiles and waves and keeps the braids in her hair cause she thinks they look pretty. Beth who never learned how to use a gun before bullets became hard to come by, Beth who could grow any herb you needed but didn’t know what it felt like to go hungry for more than a few days. Soft, was what they called her behind her back, when they thought she wasn’t listening.

They whispered about her - about her long blonde hair and her big blue eyes, her fragile bones and her pale skin, the bow of her lips and the size of her breasts. Like she was something out of a story, some mythical creature who was only still alive because men looked at her and felt the need to take care of her. 

And maybe that was true. Maybe Beth didn’t belong in this world. 

But she’d made it - lost her parents and her brother and a whole lick of other people whose faces captured her dreams on bad nights, lived through that cold winter half the settlement had fallen to, lived through the year the drought killed most the crops and the one the Woodbury gang had tried to take over.

She’d made it, and she’s damn tired of trying to justify it.

\------

She’s still shaking mad as she stands there glaring hard at Merle Dixon, arms crossed over her chest and nursing her right hand as he leers across the forge at her. 

The Dixon’s are a point of contention at every town meeting, even now, four years after they’d rolled on in to town. They’re rude, and crude, the kind of men who’d lived this kind of life long before the world fell apart at its seams. But Rick and the other elders had asked them to stay, and for some reason, the brothers had done just that - Merle can’t seem to help himself trying to fight Rick once a month, and his brother doesn’t do much more than grunt at people as a way of communication - for a few months Beth’d thought he was mute, until she’d heard him talking to Carol in some low grumble that’d made the hair on her arms stand on end. 

She’s not the only one who watches him with more curiosity than fear, though - plenty a’ women here have made it a habit to watch the pull of tight muscles in his arms when he hefts a whole deer over his shoulders to sell at market, plenty of them whisper, all t _oo bad he’s not got two brain cells to rub together_ and _hell, I don’t need him to think, I just need him still enough to ride ‘til I’m screamin’ his name._

They run the blacksmith shop, though, and in a world like this its always a comfort to have strong weapons close by, shoes for their horses and metal for building. 

“You lost, little girl?” Merle asks her as he leans in close, a crooked grin marring his face, and Beth wants to wilt under his gaze, but she stands ramrod straight and stares back at him.

She knows she doesn’t look a day over fifteen, but she’s twenty two damn years old and his scratchy voice sets her teeth on edge. But her hand is still throbbing and she thinks her thumb might be broken, but hell it’d felt good to see Ella bleed, too shocked to fight back as Beth stormed off.

“I need a weapon.”

He laughs as he tosses a hammer aside, stalking towards her like a coyote on a rabbit, and Beth takes a step back. He grins, all dirty, tar-stained teeth. “Y’er a damn riot, girl,” he says, still edging towards her, his face cast in dark shadows, makin’ the scars and age lines look ten times scarier, and when the doors burst open behind her she just about jumps outta her skin. 

“Little brother, we got ourselves a _fine_ new customer. Wants a weapon. Any weapon.” He chuckles, a low, dry thing that makes Beth’s skin itch. She watches as Daryl slides his eyes over her while he stomps over to the table set out like a front desk, or something, slamming a few pheasants down on it. “Think we got anything lyin’ around here for her? Something long’n hard’d probably do ‘er.”

Daryl grunts, shooting his brother a look through his hair. “Cut it out, Merle.”

“Oh ho, don’t like that idea do you? Ya sweet on this one? Little doe eyes, itty bitty wrists like that, gives a man ideas about what those slim fingers’d look like wrapped around -.”

“ _Cut it out._ ”

It’s weird, the way Merle speaks about her, like she’s not really there but he wants her to hear his lewd comments anyway. Strange, to hear the honesty of his thoughts, when mostly everyone just whispers about how sweet and innocent little Beth Greene is. 

Surprisingly, Merle shuts his mouth, throwing up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sure thing, baby bro. Let you handle the customer service side ‘a things.”

It’s an amusing thought, Daryl being the one to handle the people who come to the shop, and she lets out a little snort at it, one that doesn’t quite go unnoticed by either brother, both of whom turn to stare at her. Merle shoots her a look as he backs away, like he’s sizing her up, maybe, like he sees something he hadn’t expected outta her. He slides away through a ratty looking curtain, humming under his breath as he goes, and Daryl gives her a stare down, completely silent as he takes her in. 

She’s seen him around enough to know not many people get this look - he’s usually sneakier, about the way he looks at people, side eyes and glances when no one is looking. They’d met a few times, mostly at market, him tradin’ her squirrels and rabbits for the herbs and produce she and Maggie grow, and he’d always been gruff and sparse with his words. Maggie always huffed ‘bout how rude he was, but Beth had always figured that was just how he’d always been - quiet, unused to people, too busy survivin’ to deal with all the niceties the settlements have tried so hard to keep in place. She couldn’t say for sure, but she imagines the Dixon’s hadn’t had to change too much, after the world ended and took a stuttering breath back into life. 

Beth doesn’t think they’ve spoken more than fifteen words between ‘em in the years he’s been here, and the only people she’s ever seen him willingly spend time with ‘sides his brother are Rick and Carol. He probably doesn’t even know her name.

“You lookin’ for something specific?” he finally asks, blue eyes catching her gaze until she drops her own, feeling her face go red as he pulls the crossbow from around his shoulders, arms bunchin’ up in that way they do that leaves Beth a little breathless. 

There’s something different about Daryl’s strength than most of the men she knows - the way he moves, the way his body looks - muscles built for survival, grace like a cat - he’s not big and beefy like some men, but there’s a knowledge when he gets close that he could drop you without breaking a sweat, kill you before you knew he was a threat. She likes that about him, respects it. Finds she doesn’t fear it maybe as much as she should.

“I...what?” The adrenaline she’d had is petering out, now, and her hand is throbbin’ something fierce, and it takes her a second to remember why she’d come in the first place She feels like a fool, now, and shuffles her feet.

“Christ, you come in here to waste my time?”

“I was lookin’ for -.” For what? A _weapon_ , she’d said to Merle, like he didn’t forge a hundred different ones, and what the hell use does she have for a weapon anyway? What would she use? Ain’t got the arms to even load a bow, guns are hard to find and expensive to keep, any type of useful knife’d be too big and too unwieldy for her. “Nevermind. It was stupid. I’m sorry for buggin’ you.”

She raises her hand to wave him off, and a bolt of pain shoots up her wrist. Right. Another thing adrenaline was good for - makin’ her forget when she’d been dumb as rocks and mad as hell.

Beth tries not to cry out as she stumbles back just a bit, her attempt to make it out the door with a tiny bit of dignity cut short when he practically glides across the room to spin her around, concern etched in those heavy eyes, and apparently even Daryl Dixon isn’t completely immune to the sway of wantin’ to _take care_ of her and her doe eyes.

“The hell’d you do?” he asks, calloused hands reaching for her bruised knuckles.

“S’fine. I’m fine. I gotta go, I’m gonna be -.” He works his fingers across her open palm, pinky catching along the meat of her thumb and Beth curses. Her head is tilted away from her face but she’s pretty sure she catches the corner of his mouth tick up. 

“Don’t look fine.”

“Yeah, well, it _is_ , so just drop it.”

His eyes dart up just as she turns her head to meet his gaze, hair falling in his face again, and she has a weird desire to brush it back behind his ear. He seems amused by the stubborn set to her shoulders.

“Should get it looked at. Think it’s just bruised, but you might’a broken somethin’.” He hesitates once he realizes what he’s said - they’d had a doctor, a _real_ doctor, once. Her daddy. 

“Great. Sure. I’ll do that.”

He’s still got her hand cradled in his, and they stand like that for a good solid minute before he drops it and steps back like she’s on fire, head dipping low to stare at his feet. 

Her hand’s at the doorknob when he speaks up again, and she can feel her face burnin’, her knees shakin’ cause he’s gonna think the same thing of her as everyone else - weak, helpless, poor little Beth Greene.

“Helluva job you did on Ella Etwoods face,” he says, amusement in his voice, and Beth pauses. There’s something in his tone that almost sounds admiring, but that can’t be right. “Anyone ever tell you not to hit someone with a closed fist?” It should sound like he’s putting her down, but something makes her turn back all the same.

He looks like he’s tryin’ real hard not to smile, and something warm settles in her chest at the sight, her embarrassment easing as she shoots him a wry look, eyeing the way his eyes crinkle a bit at the corners when he’s trying to hide a grin. 

“Wasn’t exactly head a’ the fight club.”

“Nah, you don’t seem the type.” She wonders what that means, exactly - if he’s takin’ the measure of her just now or if he’s paid more attention to her than maybe she’d thought. It’s a small town, not too many people - it’d be hard not to at least know of each other more than a passing glance. He’d known her dad pretty well, anyway. “Could teach ya. ‘f ya wanted.”

“What?”

Other than Carol, Beth’s never seen him ‘round another woman ‘less they were flirtin’ him to uncomfortableness, and he sure doesn’t seem like the _teachin_ ’ type. 

His stance goes defensive, like he didn’t quite mean to vocalize the offer. “Never mind,” he tells her, already scowlin’ at her, and she regrets it the moment he goes still and annoyed. 

“No, I mean - It’d be nice. But, uh. Why?”

His gaze is suspicious, and he shrugs, shoulders bunching up. 

“I’unno.” 

“No, seriously. Why’d you wanna help me?”

He chews on his lip, not quite meeting her gaze, but watching her all the same. “Been waitin’ a long time fer someone to knock Etwood down a peg or two. Never though it’d be little _Beth Greene_ to do it.”

So he does know her name. Probably heard it before, people shakin’ their head as they take bets with themselves on how long she’ll last. But the way he says it, _Little Beth Greene_ \- it’s not quite the same as those other people who think she’s weak, and soft. There’s something kind of reverent in the way he says her name, like the surprise is more that she actually punched a girl in the face, and not that she could.

“She’ll come after ya, though. Stunt like that, with so many people watchin’. Like to make your life a livin’ hell.”

“Somethin’ new and exciting for me.”

Something dark passes over his face, and he nods at her hand. “You go get that taken care of. Doc says it’s healed, you come find me. F’ya still wanna learn.”

“Oh, I _wanna_ ,” she tells him, and she swears he almost smiles at her as she turns the handle and swings out the door.

\------

She still remembers the first time she heard about the Dixon’s. She’d been curled up in the chair by the front door, pickin’ at her guitar, trying to find a good melody for the songs that were in her head. There was always a song in her head, Maggie always said, and mostly when she said it is was fond, but there was a second layer to it - disdain edged in with judgment. Like Beth had it easy if the only thing in her head most days was a song.

Beth loved her sister, but Maggie never really understood her very well. Didn’t know that most of her melodies spoke of sadness and loss, most of the things she played came from that same place of pain that made her older sister lash out and rebel and push back. Didn’t know how to recognize the hiding places Beth curled up into in her mind because they didn’t come out the same way Maggie’s did.

Daddy’d been late coming home - not unusual, that time of year, with the dangers of harvest working everyone out in the fields to the bone. But he’d been late, and Beth liked to sit out on the steps and wait for him, those nights. Just...just ‘cause, mostly. Liked to see his face as he smiled, liked to feel his fingers curl over her scalp as he patted her hair, liked to imagine the lines of his face and the white of his hair would stand out stark in her memory for the rest of time. He’d be immortal, in her brain, ageless and wise, in those fleeting hours between sunset and dark when the world was bathed in the rosy hue of endings and beginnings. 

When he wandered through the gate closer to full dark she’d glanced up from the instrument, a smile and a greeting ready on her face, and her heart had skipped a beat as she took in the brown stains on his white shirt and the harried look on his face.

She’d seen enough blood in her life to know what it looked like dry, so it didn’t scare her, so much as confuse her - her Daddy’d always been real neat about changing out of clothes covered in another mans blood. She’d wondered who it was - if one of the farmhands had done somethin’ to himself, if maybe it was one of the horses. “Hey, Daddy,” she’d said, and he’d lifted a lip like it was hard work thinking up a smile.

“Come on inside with me a while,” he’d responded, and Beth had felt a chill up the back of her neck.

They’d had raids before, plenty of ‘em those first few years, actually, but Rick and his group were strong, and capable, and not much brought them to their knees. She’s seen a lot of blood, in this amputated second half of her life - seen a lot of violence, and a lot of death. Seen a lot of other things, too. Things most people didn’t like to think about in that old world - things they tucked away into dark corners and used to scare themselves just ‘cause they were too bored to do anything else. 

The way he let the door click shut behind him as he motioned her through in front of him made her stand still and careful. She’d had no mind for violence of her own, not then. No idea what she’d even do to defend herself if something bad happened around here. It was a moment of clarity, realizing all the things she couldn’t do on her own, the things she always relied on someone else for. It had been a moment of clarity. But it hadn’t been _the_ moment of clarity. No. That came later, with a scream echoing in her mind (her own, she’d realize later), and a violence in her veins that she’d never felt before.

“Is everything alright?”

Hershel Greene had sometimes been accused of being overprotective of his daughters, and especially Beth, and maybe that was true. But one thing Beth had always appreciated about her Daddy was that he was always, always honest.

“I’m not quite sure, just yet.”

She’d stoked the coals in the stove to put the kettle on, sat across the kitchen table from him while they waited for tea. He was mullin’ it over, picking over bits and pieces until he decided what to tell her. She didn’t judge him for it, didn’t get upset, just let him roll his mind around it until he finally fixed his gaze on her face. Maggie was upstairs, snorin’ already, and Beth had held her fathers gaze for what felt like a lifetime. 

“Rick is about to do something very stupid.”

“Whadda’ya mean?”

Her father had always been a man who liked to think on his words, and she’d grown patient with that, in the years since her mother died. Maggie hated it, though she’d never say, but Beth kinda liked it. It felt important, in this world where time was precious and moments came and went without any introspection. 

She’d been a poet her whole life, and even the apocalypse hadn’t changed that. Most people think it makes her weak. Beth has been comin’ around to the idea that it just makes her stronger than everyone else, in a different sort of way.

“World’s a different place than it used to be. Not just the things, the lives we lead. The people, too. They’re different. Harder. Meaner.”

Beth had hummed. She doesn’t know why the memory sticks out to her so much - the hummin’. But it’s so clear it’s almost like she can still feel the vibrations in her chest.

“Sometimes it’s good to stay away from those kinds. Sometimes I think it’s better to keep them close.”

Beth digs through the memory with new eyes. Eyes that have seen Daryl Dixon’s fingers curling around her hand like a delicate flower, eyes that have seen Merle Dixon bark out a genuine laugh at something his brother has said. Eyes that understand with perfect clarity what her father had meant. She hadn’t known it then, but she’s gettin’ a clearer picture now.

It hadn’t been Rick’s idea. The rest of the settlement don’t know that, but Rick hadn’t wanted ‘em here, at first. Not after he’d dragged Merle Dixon out the door of the tavern, kicking and hollerin’ and being a general nuisance.

It was her Daddy who’d seen the glint of their weapons, the state of the bow Daryl kept, the craft of the knives at both their hips. Seen the way Daryl Dixon left Rick be while he hauled his drunk older brother to the stocks. 

It was her Daddy who’d suggested they stay.

It was her Daddy who’d gone to bat for them, talked to the council over and over until they all started to agree with him. Hershel Greene had been the one to get the Dixon’s to stay, and she’s not even sure they ever knew it.

Everyone always used to tell her she was exactly like her Ma, from the hair to the fragile bones to the temperament, but Beth is starting to think she’s a lot more like her Daddy than anyone ever thought.

\------

“Back again, darlin’? Couldn’t get enough a’ Merle the first time, huh?”

“ _Shut up_ , Merle,” she tells him, and he whistles, grin going wide and happy, like all this time he’s just been waitin’ on someone to snap back at him. She’d almost felt bad about bein’ so rude, but now she’s kinda glad she’d come in expectin’ his sass. “Is Daryl here?”

“What you want with him? You take a roll in the hay and he forgot to call ya back?”

They still carry these old phrases that don’t mean anything now, and the thought of having a one night stand with Daryl back in the old world makes her pause, face flushing. 

“Is he here?”

“Jesus, girl, just makin’ small talk. Anyone ever teach you how to behave in polite society?”

“If I find any polite society I’ll be sure to let you know.”

She can’t quite explain why she’s talkin’ back at him - it’s not really her, not quite. At least, not to the rest of the world. She’s spent so much time bein’ polite to everything and everyone that it feels good to let the thoughts outta her head for once. Besides, who’s Merle gonna tell? 

He’s smilin’, genuine amusement behind sparkling blue eyes. “Last person who sassed me this much got a nice tattoo of my knuckles on his cheek, darlin’.”

“You plannin’ to hit me?”

His eyes are serious when they slide to her, and there’s something there she doesn’t think he lets many people see. He’d lived a full life, before this, before the world went dark, and she knows he’d seen plenty of things just as bad as roaming gangs and angry mobs. 

She’s thankful when Daryl wanders in from the back, wiping at his forehead as he pulls a heavy looking apron over his head. 

He stops dead in his tracks when he notices her standing in the middle of the shop. 

“Hi.” She wants to roll her eyes at her own damn self. 

“You got yourself a visitor, honeybuns,” Merle says, and Daryl shoots his brother an unreadable look. “Think she’s still wantin’ to play with your weapons, f’you know what I mean.”

Daryl grunts, clearly as unamused by his brother as she is. “Rick’s horse needs shoein’, Merle, and you been out here shootin’ the shit?”

“Y’ain’t the boss a’me.”

“You said you’d shoe the damn thing. Ain’t gonna do it for ya just ‘cause she kicks.”

Merle looks like he has plenty to say about that, but they stare at each other across the space of the shop for a long moment before the older man rolls his eyes, nodding to Beth before he turns away. “Be seein’ ya, Eliza,” he says, and Beth fights the urge to tell him her name isn’t Elizabeth.

Daryl shuffles once his brother has disappeared, peering at her through his hair again. “How’s yer hand?”

“It’s better. That’s why I came by. I thought... well, if you’re still willin’, maybe you could...”

“Yeah,” he says, like he’s in a rush, looking strangely out of breath. “If ya want.”

She has to talk herself down from doing a little jig, but she can’t stop the smile from blooming across her face. “Okay! When - is there a good time for me to come back, or...?”

“Could go now,” he tells her, his hand drifting up to his face like he’s not sure where to hold it. He turns his thumb outwards, chews at the nail there. “’less you got something else goin’ on.”

Supper’s only a few hours away, but Maggie’s been off with Glenn since they finished their work this morning and Beth has an inkling she won’t make it back in time to eat. It’s been almost a week and a half since she’d knocked Ella in the face, and the girls have been skirting her ever since, whispering about how she’s a loose cannon, or something, probably gone crazy after too long trying to survive, the way she is. She’s been kinda worried Daryl had forgotten his offer, or maybe that she’d get him on an ornery day and he’d chase her off - she hadn’t expected nervous glances and an invitation to spend the evening with him.

“We gotta go somewhere?”

This earns an almost smile as she raises an eyebrow. “You wanna be seen wrasselin’ behind the forge?”

“Not really.”

“Well, c’mon then.”

She watches the pull of his shoulders under his henley as he reaches for the crossbow hung on the wall and shrugs into that familiar vest of his, all smooth buttery leather and frayed angel wings. She’s stared at that vest long and hard enough to burn holes into it, finds something comforting in the way the wings seem to pull up and down with his catlike grace. 

She’s paid a lot of attention to him, in the years since he showed up here and begrudgingly took a place among them. Isn’t sure what that means, exactly - the payin’ attention. 

She follows him through a long hallway, eyeing the assortment of weapons hung along one wall, and out into the low sunlight trickling through the leaves as they pass through the back door and out the back of the forge - the light is bright after the dimness of the blacksmith’s shop, and she blinks as her eyes adjust, gaze catching the wings on Daryl’s back again before the rest of him comes into focus.

He turns to catch her eye, tilts his head towards the trees edging behind the buildings along town square, and Beth squares her shoulders, keeping her tread light as she follows him into the forest without a second thought.  



	2. ii. kiss the skin that crawls from you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl starts making plans. Beth doesn't know what to do with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know what it is about Beth Greene that makes my writing so meandering, but I kind of like it. 
> 
> For anyone wondering what the hell the yellow car thing is about: My dad bought one of these for a hundred bucks ten years ago, and it’s spent the last eight sitting in our backyard. My dog has befriended a burrow of bunnies who live under there now.

There’s this yellow Chevrolet that sits at the outskirts of town, nestled in a copse of trees and resting nearly against a fence that’s seen better days. The tires went flat years and years ago, and the weeds have curled up into the hubcaps and crept along the edges of the doors. One widow is missing - the glass broken long ago, and the vines grow up along the side and into the cab, hanging loose over bucket seats that have long since been borrowed into by mice and rats and all number of other creatures. It sticks out in her mind now, that yellow car. Useless, beaten into submission by the forces of nature around it, but it still retains that sunflower yellow color, unmuted by time or nature. 

She imagines she’s one of the few people left who thinks about these kinds of things. She thinks that’s kinda sad.

(She tries to tell herself she doesn’t feel some kinship to that rotted out old car, doesn’t wonder at her own usefulness in a world like this. Wonders if it’d meant something to someone, once - the bright paint and the tiny black pinstripe along the doors, the little hula girl on the dash and the steering wheel cover decorated by faded pictures of a dancing banana. Wonders who it’d belonged to, what their dreams were, once upon a time.)

\------

“Thought you were gonna teach me how to fight?” she’d asked him, about a mile into the woods, and he’d rolled his shoulders like he was expecting a fight outta her. It’d been strange, walking through the forest with his footsteps nearly silent beside her, and he’d shot her a look outta the corner of his eye like he wasn’t sure how to explain himself.

She should have felt fear - she could hear Maggie’s voice in her head, warning her away from the Dixon’s when they’d rolled into town, warning her that men like that wouldn’t want nothin’ good from a girl like Beth Greene. 

Instead she’d just been curious - wondering if maybe Daryl Dixon had noticed her as much as she’d noticed him. Like maybe he just wanted to spend some time with her.

She dashes that thought away real quick. Stupid, starry-eyed Beth Greene had no place wishin’ up mutual crushes with a man like Daryl, a man who could have any sort of woman he wanted in this town, even if it seemed like he made an effort to stay away from most of them anyway. What would she have to offer him, anyway? A pretty smile and an herb garden? No. Whatever they were doin’ out here, that wasn’t a part of it.

“’m workin’ up to it. You’re so scrawny right now your arm’d break, you try to hit someone again. Think’a this as training.” He wasn’t uncomfortable with her though. Or he wasn’t uncomfortable in the same way she’d seen him be before. There was something more open in the way he looked at her, the way their shoulders would bump accidentally sometimes, the way he spoke to her - words still clipped and even, but revealing a little bit more of Daryl Dixon than she thought he usually did. 

“Walking through the woods ain’t gonna make my arms any stronger,” she’d told him on a smile, and he’d stopped in his tracks, staring at a tree behind her for a moment before he seemed to make up his mind. 

When he pulled the crossbow up over his head, Beth blinked at him for a good minute in confusion. 

“Ya wanna learn to take care a’ yer’self, figure huntin’s a good a place to start as any.”

\------

It’s not what she expected. _He’s_ not what she expected. He’s gruff, doesn’t seem to like to waste words, but he’s smart, and a whole lot better at teachin’ her things than she’d expected. 

And he’s teachin’ her way more than she’d ever expected. 

He doesn’t really ever explain why, but she appreciates it all the same. He ain’t just teachin’ her how to take a punch (although they’re workin’ on that, too, and her skin tingles at the thought of his hands curling around her own, arms brushing hers and fingers skimming her waist as he kicks at her feet to get her in the proper stance, thumb glancing along her side as he teaches her how to dodge and parry) - he’s teachin’ her how to _live_ , how to survive. 

It’s more than anyone else ever thought to do. 

They go out once, sometimes twice a week, whenever he’s got spare time and she isn’t working in the fields behind the settlement. They don’t ever really set a time - sometimes she’ll show up unannounced to the shop, sometimes he’ll catch her eye across the square - once he’d shown up at the house, shufflin’ uncomfortably on the porch while Maggie stared him down and Beth made her excuses.

He hasn’t come back to the house, since then. 

Maggie won’t let it go. Seems to think it’s something she’s got any right to stick her nose in, when she’d been too busy for a month to even notice Beth was gone at least a few nights a week. 

“I just don’t trust him, is all,” Maggie tells her as they tend the garden early one morning. Beth had barely slept a wink, still keyed up from her first successful hunt, and every time she shut her eyes all she saw was the pleased look on Daryl’s face when she’d nabbed that rabbit. Her arms are killin’ her, and she’s gotta look like death, but she’s still got a hum in her blood and an itch to howl at the moon a bit. 

“Well I trust him. Ain’t that enough?”

Maggie hesitates, and Beth can’t help the way she clenches her jaw. She gets it. She does. Maggie never says it, but she’s got the same feelin’ about Beth that most people do - surprise that Beth has made it this long, surprise that she’s still hopeful, and kind, and hasn’t had the joy of life beat outta her like most folk. Maggie still looks at her and sees the teenage girl who hadn’t eaten for nearly a fortnight after seein’ her mother dragged away from them by a roving gang. Still looks at her and sees the girl who’d clung to her daddy, who’d blinked up at Rick Grimes like he could keep her world from upending. If Beth had to wager a guess, Maggie thinks Daryl is the newest in the line of men Beth has decided to hero worship. She wants to tell her how untrue that is, but she doesn’t have a clue where to start.

“What do you even do, out there?” Its supposed to be a question, but it sounds more like an accusation. She’s tried to tell her sister about it before, but she’s not sure she wants to share it anymore. 

“Nothin’. Don’t worry about it.”

Maggie sighs, wipes at her brow with dirt-covered hands. “I worry about you all the time, Bethy.”

Beth doesn’t meet her gaze, doesn’t respond. Her sister doesn’t get it, she won’t even if Beth tries to explain, but that’s _exactly_ what she’s tryin’ to change. She doesn’t need the whole world watchin’ out for her all the time. She can take care of her own damn self.

How is it that the only person who’s ever seen that is Daryl Dixon?

\------

They’re quiet as they return from the woods, the sun just edging up over the lines of houses, shards of light hitting the ground of the square, the world slowly rising from it’s slumber. Daryl’s got the bow slung over his shoulder, and Beth wipes at her face to clear the beads of sweat there, feeling the weight of their kills against her thigh where they’re tied to her belt. 

There’s something calm and uncareful about Daryl, in the early hours before the town stirs, something she likes maybe even more than the furled danger of him in the sunlight. He’s more open, even if he doesn’t say much. The swing of his arm, the tilt of his chin, the looseness of his limbs - they tell her enough. 

He goes still as they both hear the cries from the stables across the square, shoulders tensing, head snapping up and away from his lazy perusal of the hedgerows next to her. 

She’s off, chasing the sound with a string of rabbits bouncing along her leg, before he gets his bearings.

It’s Carl and Rick she finds right outside the stable doors, but it’s the screams from the horse inside it that are cause for concern. It’s loud, long, painful noise, the kind that tears into your skin and won’t let loose, and Beth doesn’t hesitate to push right past the Grimes and through the doors, ignoring their warnings and protests. There’s not a whole lot she’s great at, but it just so happens she’s great with animals. Even the distressed ones. Hell - especially the distressed ones.

She’d had a horse, once, back at the farm. Nervous Nellie, they called her, and it hadn’t just been a random name. She’d spooked at the slightest change in the breeze, kicked and spat and nipped at any old thing. She’d been Beth’s for a reason - settled herself at the sound of Beth’s voice, calmed at the slightest touch from Beth’s fingers. She’s always had a calm about her, or so her Daddy’d told her back when he was still a vet and the nervous pets went still in her presence. 

The stable hand is a man about Beth’s age, dark skinned and dark eyed, and she shoots him a look as he stares at a stall with the gate shut. Noah, she thinks his name is, and she can hear the panicked whinnies from behind the closed door. “Shouldn’t shut her in like that,” she tells him, and he looks like he wants to tell her off for even coming in here, but he doesn’t pluck up the courage to actually do it. “Makes ‘em more nervous.”

“I don’t even know what spooked her in the first place,” he mutters, petulant and annoyed. 

She wants to tell him off, but she knows not everyone is used to this kind of thing. He’s new, to the settlement, had obviously spent a lot of time someplace more closed off than this, though she can’t imagine where that might have been. Putting him with the animals had probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s clear he doesn’t have the patience for it. She makes a mental note to talk to Rick about that.

She edges toward the gate, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat like he means to stop her. She ignores it, pushes past him. “You can go,” she tells him, voice soft and even.

The other horses are starting to kick up a fuss, as well, picking up on the distressed noises coming from the stall in front of her, and Beth is careful as she pulls at the sliding lock that will open the window in the door. 

It swings open with a small squeak, and the mare inside nickers unhappily. She’s pacing, as much as she can in her space, and Beth watches her for a moment until the young palamino notices her. 

She tosses her head, lips curled up over a row of teeth, more annoyed than anything else, and stomps as she spins in place again, irritation obvious in her movements. 

“What’s goin’ on, girl?”

The horse pauses, at that, her head tilting toward the noise as her movements stutter, a bit. She snorts, again, close enough to Beth that Beth feels the heat of her breath. 

It takes a while to calm her, and a longer time for Beth to feel comfortable getting close to the gate, but whatever had spooked her is long gone, now, and as she inches forward, the mare bobs her head in Beth’s direction, seeking out attention, now. 

“Just havin’ a rough morning, huh girl?” Beth asks her, keeping her voice that same cool and low tenor she’s held this whole time, and the mare blows out a slow breath, nosing into the hand Beth holds forward for her. 

They stay like that a while, just the two of them, breathing slowly and watching each other. She’s proud of herself for not startling when she hears shuffling near the entrance to the stables, well aware that any sudden movements would probably set the mare off again. She turns her head and is only mildly surprised to find Daryl watching her, leaned against the frame of the doorway, bathed in early morning sunlight. 

He’s taken to doing that, a lot. Watching her, studying her. Most of the time he’s still pretty sneaky about it, but there are these moments, unguarded and private, that she’ll catch him looking at her, watching her with eyes that she knows take in details no one else would bother to notice. There’s something new in the gaze now, not surprise, exactly, but a new kind of understanding she doesn’t know the meaning of.

The mare grows bored without Beth’s focused attention, and chuffs at her before she butts her nose one last time against Beth’s hand before retreating further into her stall.

She’s slow to return to the entrance, feeling Daryl’s gaze on her the entire way back into the sunlight, which has now covered the square in soft yellows. 

She scuffs her boot against the ground as she slides into it, ducking her head away from the intensity of his gaze. “Sorry. Didn’t even think to let you have these before I ran off in there.” She gestures vaguely at the spoils of their hunt, and watches out of the corner of her eye as Daryl blinks like he’d completely forgotten about them. 

They’re quiet for a moment as Beth unfurls the string from around her waist, preparing to split the carcasses between them. “You’re good with them,” he finally mutters. He’s being genuine with the compliment, no airs or real purpose to the comment other than just to let her know - he’s always like that, and it feels like a secret she shares with him, knowing that when he says something like that he really means it. “How come you don’t work with ‘em?”

It’s rare that she gets a question outta him. He gets his answers through study, and not through talking, most of the time. Beth strugs, though, startled when he nudges her shoulder with his to steer her into walking again, like he means to escort her home, or something. They usually part ways at the edge of the forest - they live on opposite sides of town and it never really makes sense to extend their time together. 

It’s been a strange morning all around, though, so she lets him, falling into an easy pace towards the house she and Maggie share. She lets the string of rabbits fall back to her side.

“Guess everyone thought it was too dangerous, or something.”

He mulls that over for a bit. 

“‘sides, we all got jobs to do. Tomatoes ain’t gonna grow themselves.” She says it lightly, sort of jokingly, and he shoots her a considering look through hair hanging low over his cheekbones. She wonders how often anyone ever cuts it - how often _he_ cuts it, ‘cause he don’t seem like the type to let people touch him more than necessary. She likes it long, thinks it gives him a bit of a rugged, boyish flare, but she wonders, all the same. 

“Yeah, guess we all take that Greene thumb for granted.”

She snorts out a surprised laugh at the unexpected pun. 

“You didn’t have ta stay. I coulda dropped off your share at the forge, later.”

He shrugs, continues walking with her. Its a slow amble, easy and sort of hesitant, strangely out of place as the settlement comes awake around them. Everything is always so hurried, in the early morning hours, people rushing to get out for the day, run their errands, grab water from the well, prepare for the day. She likes the steady pace they have going. 

It’s not the first time he’s made her wonder what the hell he’s getting out of this little arrangement. Maggie seems to think he has an angle - no, Maggie seems to think he wants something, and that _something_ would have made Beth blush to the roots of her hair if anyone had hinted at it a few months ago, would have made her laugh in disbelief. But it’s not that. Whatever Daryl might or might not want from her, it’s clear he’s not thinking with his dick, in all of this. 

She’s not sure Daryl’s actually done anything thinkin’ with his dick _ever_ , not that anyone would believe her. Not with Merle for a brother, surely.

Sometimes she wonders if he just likes being around her, if he feels a bit like those anxious animals she’s so good at calming. 

He walks her all the way to the gate, fingers sliding along the fence line that surrounds the little garden they keep in front of the house. 

He hesitates as she pulls at the lock, the gate squeaking on it’s hinges, her fingers already working at handing him off his share of the game they’d killed that morning. 

He takes them with a nod, still biting at his lip. “I guess I’ll see ya next time,” she tells him, and he nods again. Rolls his tongue along the side of his mouth. 

Finally, he seems to decide something. “You know how to ride?”

She tilts her head on a smile. “Daryl, I grew up on a farm.”

“Yeah.” He knows this, probably knew that before he knew much else about her, if only because he’d heard about it in passing when he spent time with her father. 

“Why d’you wanna know?”

“Been thinking of following the river up into the hills. Game’s all tucked away for the summer, there. Be nice to have some meat to smoke before fall hits.”

“Can’t take the horses up into the hills.”

“Nah. Could leave em at the old farmhouse by the highway.” 

It strikes her that he’s probably thought about this, a bit. They’ve been circling wider into the woods around the settlement the last few months, but never so far that it wasn’t an easy trek back. 

“We’d have to camp for the night,” she reminds him, like he’s not completely aware of this. There’s a little frisson of anticipation sliding up her spine, one she can’t quite explain. But it feels important. Big. 

“You afraid of roughin’ it, Greene?”

She rolls her jaw as she straightens her shoulders.  “I happen to be an expert camper, Mister Dixon. First girl in my troupe to get it, I’ll have you know.”

The corners of his eyes curl up as he smiles. “Should wait a few weeks, though. Wait for things to cool down a bit.”

“Okay.”

He nods like it’s settled, takes a few steps backward in the direction they’d come from. She feels a bit drunk, giddy and excited, and she knows it’d shock people, her being thrilled by the prospect of spending a few days out in the wilderness, the sun bearing down on her and her muscles burning with the hike. It wouldn’t surprise Daryl, at least.

“Hey Daryl?” she’s halfway through the gate when she turns back around, and he throws his head over his shoulder, pausing to look back at her. “I’ll see you at market,” she tells him. It’s probably the first time she’s ever made a note to mention where she’ll be at a specific time, the first time she’s mentioned she hopes to see him. He holds her gaze, nods, and throws a hand over his shoulder in farewell. 

She doesn’t tell anyone about the plans she’s made - doesn’t tell anyone about the rest of her morning, either, as she’s tending the garden next to Maggie later on. It feels like a secret, something for just the two of them, something no one else will really understand. She likes it. Likes the thought of having something she shares just with him.

Maggie makes note of her strange silence, but Beth just shrugs, smiles, and returns to her tomato plants.

\------

“Mornin’ Miss Doolittle,” Merle says as she slips through the back door of the forge. Beth’s brow scrunches as she tries to place the nickname, but he’s already turned away from her by the time it comes to her. She doesn’t hide the head shake.

Neither one of the Dixon’s are as dumb as they pretend to be, and they’re sure as hell well-versed in useless zeitgeist references that will disappear from memory a generation from now. 

She can’t help picturing a young Merle Dixon curled in front of a television with a snot nosed Daryl clinging to his arm, watching My Fair Lady for the umpteenth time. But the nickname catches up with her and she pauses as she hears Daryl’s soft tread on the stairs that lead up to the apartment over the forge. 

Did that make him her Henry Higgins?

She bites her lip and refuses to let her thoughts wander down that absurd train of thought.  

She turns the corner, ready to give Daryl shit for sleepin’ in (God, he could sure be a pain in the ass every time he made fun of her for her habit of stumblin’ around like the dead until the sun had risen), but her words stutter in her throat at the sight of him, shirtless and sleepy, running a hand through a mess of bedhead, the beard around his jawline rougher looking than usual. 

“Oh.”

His head snaps up, meets her gaze, and he goes still, like she’s the predator here and if he stays still enough she won’t attack. She fights hard to keep her gaze at eye level, but the stretch of muscle across his abdomen, the ink etched into his skin, and the glimpse of a scar wrappin’ around his side towards his back is already seared into her mind. She’s never seen him without at least a few layers on - even in the midst of sweltering heat, when all the other men around the settlement have sloughed them off while they’re building or digging or doing whatever else they did that made them sweat like pigs and turn bright pink in the sun. She’s getting the gist of why that is, now.

“The fuck’r you doin’ here?” he asks, in a tone she hasn’t heard from him in a while. Like he’s really mad at her, and not just playin’ at it. 

“I was - uh.” 

“How’d you even get in here? You just breakin’ and enterin’, now, like you got a damn right to be here whenever the hell you feel like it?”

There’s a flash behind his eyes Beth’s never seen before, and he’s close to yellin’, now, but she won’t cower. Refuses. He’s mad about something, sure, but it ain’t that she’s makin’ herself welcome here. “Daryl -.”

“No, don’t make fuckin’ excuses, Greene! The hell d’you get off? This ain’t some playhouse for you to traipse through whenever the hell you feel like it!”

“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me, Daryl Dixon!” He rears back at her voice cutting across his. Shoulders slumpin’ in, he clenches his jaw and doesn’t say another word, but she can feel the anger radiating off of him. “I came by ‘cause you said you wanted an early start this mornin’, and you’re always complainin’ about gettin’ stiff joints waitin’ around in the cold for me, but if you’re gonna be an _ass_ about it I’ll just go on my own and let you stew in your rotten mood all day.”

She’s breathin’ heavy by the time she finishes, and she wants to cry, a little, but she won’t let him see her like that. She’s not gonna act like a little girl gettin’ reprimanded.

“I’m sorry I surprised you.” She’s still holding his gaze, waiting for him to either yell her out of the place, or at least let his eyes drop. He’s still watchin’ her, though, like he’s seein’ something he doesn’t actually know how to deal with. “But I’m not gonna stand around and let you holler at me when you’re mad about something else entirely.”

She doesn’t let her gaze falter, but she can still see the way his hand drifts across the faded end of the scar she’d seen. She wonders how many there are, wonders if he’s ever let anyone see them. From the careful hunch of his shoulders she’s guessing probably not. 

“I’m gonna make some breakfast, and then I’m gonna let Merle tell me war stories until he gets bored and wants to stab something, and then I’m gonna head out for a few hours. If you wanna join me for any a’ that you come on down when you think you can talk to me without yellin’. And if you never wanna talk to me again that’s fine too. I don’t think I’d like that very much, but I’d get it.”

His hands clench at his sides, and Beth just gives him a firm nod before she spins on her heel to follow in the direction Merle had gone. 

He joins them halfway through breakfast, looking like a little kid trying to keep from getting grounded again, and Merle laughs around a spoonful of eggs, loud and scratchy. “Christ, boy, baby Greene’s got you by the balls.”

“Shut up, Merle,” Beth tells him none too delicately as she sharpens a knife on the whetstone across the table from him. Merle swallows, eyes her like he can’t decide exactly what he’s thinking about her. 

“Yes ma’am,” he finally mutters around his mug, and they eat the rest of the meal in silence. 

Beth isn’t sure when exactly she’d gotten both the Dixon’s under her thumb, but she can’t say she ain’t at least a little pleased about it. They’re the only ones who really see it, the steel in her bones, the strength of her convictions. The unwavering loyalty she’s decided to extend to the both of them. She can’t decide if they ever talk about her, just the two of them - it would surprise her, honestly, but they seem to be pretty close. Closer than they were when they got here, anyway.

She gets it now - why Daryl and Merle have stuck around here so long. Rick, Carol - they don’t take the Dixon’s for granted. They know their worth. In a place like this - after the lives they’ve led - it’s something they value. Being a part of something. Being a part of a _good_ thing. 

She doesn’t know much about Merle other than the honest things she gleans from his mostly tall tales - the awful nasty father (and she’s finally getting a picture of exactly how awful he really was), the absent mother, the drugs and the crimes. He’d kicked a drug habit sometime after the first year of the end of the world, once his stash’d run out and people were starting to realize drugs were gonna be necessary for things besides gettin’ high; saved a family from raiders only to watch a girl Beth’s age die of internal injuries a week later. He’s seen so many bad things in this world, but this is the first place he’s ever felt like he might be close to belonging. He plays at hating Rick, but she thinks he lashes out, like Daryl had at her today - stray dogs unsure if the hand reaching for them is meant to comfort or maim. 

“Y’all headin’ out again today?” Merle finally asks, as they’re scraping at crumbs and refusing to make eye contact, and Beth turns her gaze to Daryl, finally, to see him eyein’ her like he’s afraid she might vanish under his watch. 

“Long as Daryl still wants to,” she says, vaguely accusing, watching him swallow and shift his gaze to the space over her shoulder. 

He hums under his breath, biting at his lip, and Beth watches him carefully, waits for him to get over his damn stubbornness and just say somethin’. 

Merle thwaps him hard over the head as he stands, rolls his eyes like it’s a god given talent, and clears up all three of their bowls, something Beth’s never once seen him do before. “Y’all are givin’ me an ulcer with this shit,” he finally mutters, and Daryl meets her gaze. His cheeks are tinged pink, and Beth can’t quite figure why.

“Set some snares last night. Could check those first.”

It’s about as good an apology as she’s gonna get, so Beth nods, quiet and firm. 

They don’t get around to talking about his scars for a long time after.

\------

The year Beth turned eighteen was the first year the Dixon’s were subjected to the harvest festival. They’d been there a few months, at that point, had started building the forge hoping to get it up before they hit winter, and Beth had been taggin’ along with Rick as he went around reminding everyone when it was and what to bring. There’d been a whole lotta new people at the settlement, that year, and they’d all been surprised by the thing, like other places they’d been to didn’t do much celebratin’. 

By then they’d been doing the festival for years - after the winter the crops froze two months early, they’d made it a point to have the festival. The first year had been maudlin as hell, mostly just a remembrance of the dead, but they’d kept it up, after, eager to have something to look forward to before the frost set in and the nights grew long. 

She’d been there, looming behind Rick and keepin’ an eye on the brothers like her sister had told her, when he rounded to the far side of the square to where they were hammerin’ away at a retaining wall to invite them to join. 

She’d seen them around, been curious about the man Rick’d thrown in the stocks for a week after he’d started a fight at the tavern his first night in town, curious about his brother, who her father had made mention had some seriously well crafted weapons. She could still remember the way she’d bit her lip to keep from questioning her father about Daryl Dixon - the way he spoke of the younger brother made her wonder exactly how much of Maggie’s warning’s were unwarranted, but she didn’t want to draw attention to the curiosity.

Three years on since the last gang came through, and there hadn’t been much talk of raids since then around these parts, but the council was always thinking about it. Maggie had fought them on it - didn’t want them livin’ in town, getting comfortable with the people here. 

Still, she hadn’t seen as much of them as she’d have liked - always eager to know as much as she could about people. Her Daddy’d always said it was her greatest gift and her greatest curse. That was the closest she’d ever gotten to them, Merle with his short, graying hair and his grizzled beard and a crooked grin smirking at her over Rick’s shoulder, and his brother, farther off, sweat stained undershirt clinging to his back and three nails in his mouth as he swore at an uncooperative bit of wood, swirls of tattoos peeking out from under the cloth of his shirt. 

She’d watched his arms work as he swung down from his perch, and swallowed heavily, something unfamiliar curling in her belly. 

There’d been a few boys here and there that’d tried to woo her, like she was some prize to be won, and maybe the first time it’d been flattering, but there were only so many weed bouquets she could stand before she got bored with it. Her first kiss had been wet and sloppy and Jeffrey Bloom had gotten a handful of nothing under her bra before he got bored and moved on to bustier pastures. 

This was different than that - something wild that unfurled in her bones and made her wish she was as clever as Maggie, or as strong as Lori, as confident as Michonne. 

She’d gone home that night and curled under the covers, cool air wafting in behind bright white curtains, her fingers drifting across her skin, over her belly, down into the downy hair below, and she’d had to bite into her pillow to keep from whimpering when lights burst behind her eyelids a few minutes later, her body pulsing and wired and humming with some new bit of knowledge about the world, something she hadn’t known before, something that dug into the bits of her soul she didn’t let out in polite company. 

A week later he’d bumped into her on accident as she weaved her way through the crowds wandering the decorated square, and he’d barely given her a second glance as she apologized, grunting at her as his eyes slid over her like she was just a part of the scenery.

That night she’d sung to the town, her voice sweet and soft as she smiled, and when her eyes sought the crowd for his face, she’d caught his eye for half a second before he kicked at the ground like it’d offended him, turning and stalking away while she was still mid-note.

She’d buried that feral little animal inside her a whole lot deeper. Hadn’t thought much about it again until the day she’d thrown a fist into Ella Etwoods face.   



	3. they will shake their heads and wag their bony fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl and Beth hunt some more, share a drink, and talk about some things they've been keeping to themselves for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The songs Beth hears, in order: “Summertime” by Ella Fitzgerald, “I Put A Spell On You” by Nina Simone, and “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone.
> 
> This starts off pretty meandering, but Daryl has apparently grown tired of not featuring prominently in this story, and has decided to stage a coup.

There’d been rumors, years and years ago, that a government was reforming, that communities were rebuilding, that even without the technology of the old world, people across the country were finding ways to communicate and travel and begin to build a country again.  


Rumors was all it ever amounted to. 

There are a few settlements near theirs, a few days ride away, and maybe it doesn’t make sense to live such insular lives, when they could build a stronger (and better defensible) community if they all banded together. But they’ve gotten used to things being the way they are. Used to the people in their town, used to the way they share the load of work and take care of their own. 

And maybe they’ve all learned to distrust strangers. 

The other settlements aren’t really strangers, exactly, but they see a few people travel their way once, sometimes twice a year, and they don’t really know them. Not the way Rick’s community knows each other. 

Beth sometimes wonders at that - at the way the world has turned in on itself, a bit. Still remembers a time when people shared pictures of themselves, posted stories about their days, threw their thoughts out into the world for anyone to see. And now they shrink away from new people, rely on only a small group, insulate themselves from the outside world. There’s every possibility there is someone out there trying to build a new structure, create a government, bring the world back to some semblance of what it used to be. But most people have had a shift in philosophy in the decade since technology failed them. Most people wouldn’t trust a republic even if they were offered it on a silver platter.

And there’s so many of them, spread out across hundreds of miles with little communication between them - how would anyone ever even get them to start acting like a country again?

No. However this world has changed, it’s here to stay. At least for a time.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? Everything changes. Everything evolves. Their way of life may not be the most sophisticated, but it works for them. And it probably won’t always. There are plenty of younger kids here who are always curious about newcomers, always eager for stories of the world the way it used to be, wide eyed by the thought of computers and laptops and smartphones, curious about the ways people used to be able to communicate in the blink of an eye. They never lived through that time, when you could be lonely even surrounded by a hundred people. Beth misses the ease of things, sometimes, but even she finds comfort in the way things have been simplified - in the way they live now.

Those kids - they won’t feel the same way. They don’t.

Beth wonders if she’ll be around when they start to change the world again. 

\------

He doesn’t invite her, not quite. Just mentions he’s plannin’ to spend the night at the tavern, how Merle’s dragging him there, and when she tells him she’s only ever been inside the place once, he gives her a look, hums, low in his throat, and shrugs. “Pretty much your run of the mill dive. Less crappy jukebox music, less neon lights, less shitty european liquor. Same everything else.”

It’s a hole in the wall place that some of them fought hard not to have, but in the end the council had caved under the knowledge that if they refused to let it be built people would find more nefarious ways to spend their free time. Rick and Michonne break up fights there every so often, but it’s mostly just a place where people gather to talk about the old days and drink away the slough of this lifestyle. 

One time Theodore had tried to 86 the Dixon’s, and Merle had started makin’ his own moonshine in the woods behind the settlement. It was strong stuff, and Merle drank it by the bucketload, and then he’d wander the streets late at night kickin’ up a fuss and starting shit with anything that so much as moved, including but not limited to trees waving in the breeze. 

Michonne had been the one to make the argument that Merle was perhaps better suited to being relegated to his little corner of the tavern and left to his own devices.

Theodore had reluctantly agreed, and somewhere in the years since he and Merle had become friendly. Or as friendly as Merle was with anyone, anyway. He’d even taken to trading his distilled liquor with Theodore in exchange for some of the top shelf whiskey Theodore had ferreted away a decade ago. 

Beth only knows this because she pays attention to things more than she should. She’d met T-Dog once or twice, usually at market - they didn’t really run in the same circles, and Beth had only been to the tavern once. 

She doesn’t really remember much of that night, if she’s being completely honest. Two weeks after the Woodbury gang came through, she’d gotten into a fight with Maggie that’d shook the walls of their home, and she’d left in a huff, angry at the world and ready to do something stupid.

(She remembers her first few drinks, but after that it’d been a blur. Still doesn’t actually know how she’d gotten home, and she’s too embarrassed to ask. The vague memory she has of an arm wrapped around her, of the smell of musk and moonshine and leather as she giggled in the middle of the square and muttered about _‘burning it down_ ’ still makes her cheeks flush.)

Still, as night approaches and Maggie tells Beth she’s going to meet Glenn down at the creek, Beth slides into her room and stares at herself in the dingy little mirror hanging by her door. 

It’s been a long time since she’s taken a good look at herself - there’s never been much time for her to care what she looked like. She shouldn’t now, if she’s bein’ honest, it’s not like even if Daryl was interested he’d notice the difference, but there’s a shift going on in her world right now, and the last time she’d thought about the way people looked at her she’d still been young and naive. Still thought like a little girl, dressed like a little girl.

Her jeans are worn and thin, a hole in one knee she’s never bothered to fix, and her hair has grown long and unruly again. She lingers on her knobby knees, the slight bow of her legs, the pinstraight transition from her waist to her hips. She’s always been scrawny, that’s nothing new, but for some reason her mind focuses on it now.

Beth shakes her head, moves on. Her arms she appreciates for a bit - the pull of muscle in them is new, and she likes the way it looks, the way they bunch under her skin and the way they curl against her body. Her hands are more worn, the nails cut short and even, close to the quick. There are calluses along her palms that she’s more proud of than anything else, and the tan of her skin is different than it would have been working out in the fields all the time. Against the cream of her shirt it seems almost golden, glistening, alive against the clear blue of her eyes and the fall of bright hair. 

Beth’s never really thought too much about her looks, but she’s satisfied with this. There’s a weight to her gaze, a strength in her shoulders, a new looseness in her limbs, a sturdiness to her stance. She looks strong, at least to her own eyes.

(She doesn’t let the thought linger, but she imagines this is something Daryl might appreciate more than styled hair or pink lips.)

She doesn’t change her clothes. Waits for the sun to drop below the horizon while she plucks at guitar strings, not playing anything, and then tugs on her boots and heads out the front door. 

It’s still late summer, the days sweltering and the nights muggy, and she can feel the sheen of wet across her skin as she walks past rows of houses towards the square. Cicadas chirp in the trees, and the sound of homes nestling in for the night is soft and quiet as lanterns are lit behind curtained windows. 

There’s a peacefulness to it, to this world where televisions don’t hum as they throw dark rooms into blue light, this world where nighttime heralds family time indoors, and rest before another days hard work starting early in the morning. 

The tavern is the only place along the square showing any signs of activity, and she’s honestly a bit surprised by exactly how lively it seems - loud laughter echoing beyond the shutter doors, a tune whistling across the night. T-Dog has a record player he salvaged somewhere along the road to here, a revamped version that ran on electricity, probably used almost exclusively by hipsters once upon a time when that was something that seemed outlandish and out of the mainstream. She remembers someone mentioning the solar panels someone had hacked to make the thing work - it’s a bit silly, that of all the things they could’ve used it on, it’s just a tiny source of old world entertainment, not even something a lot of people had used at the time everything fell apart. 

Still, she’s never heard the thing playing, and it’s strange, almost ghostlike, the slow croon of a woman warbling out a tune about summertime. 

She pushes through the doors after a moment’s hesitation, the music drifting through behind her as she slides into the dim, smoky light. 

Merle, already well into his drink, if the lazy sling of his limbs is anything to go by, sees her almost immediately, his grin doing a wide, feral little tug that would make any other woman think twice about approaching him. Some women would back away from the warning, others would swing towards the challenge. Beth ignored it, took it for what it was. An offering of affection, in the only way Merle knew how to give it. 

“You lost, girl?” His voice booms loud and scratchy against the wooden walls, and Beth fights back a smile as he gives her a lopsided grin. Pleased to see her, far less surprised than his words claimed. 

She sees Daryl turn towards his brothers voice where he’s leaned against the bar, and his eyes widen a bit as her heart does a little jump in her chest. He looks different, is the first thing she notices, but before she can so much as wave at him Merle is pulling her attention away again.

“Wasn’t sure you’d have the balls to show up to a place like this,” he tells her, and she takes a long look around the place before she pulls up an ironic eyebrow. There’s a poker game going on in the corner, men slouched low and serious over their cards, and a group of women talking quietly by the door, rolled cigarettes in hand and a firm set to their shoulders. T-Dog behind the bar is wearing a bright yellow smock over a collared shirt with a floral design, and a man by the record player flipping through music options with cigar hanging out the side of his mouth. 

He slides a new record in, and Nina Simone’s voice whispers over the place like a cool breeze. 

“Yeah, it’s a real rough crowd in here.”

Merle laughs, a heavy chuckle straight from his gut, and takes another swig of amber colored liquid from a snifter that would have shown signs of wealth, a decade ago. 

“You gonna pick a fight with someone? Rough ‘em up a bit? Show ‘em what you’ve been learnin’ out in the woods?”

Her face feels warm as she stares back at him, and his grin slips a bit wider, the flickering lamplight casting his face in deep shadows. 

“Unless you been doin’ somethin’ else out there.”

“That’s none’a your business, Merle Dixon.”

His look turns serious as he shoots a stare across to his brother - Daryl’s body turned out a bit more, away from the bar and towards the two of them. His gaze is still firmly on T-Dog as the man talks to him, but Beth is sure he’s got an ear turned to them. Merle leans in, his voice dropping low. “Hell it ain’t, _Miss Greene._ Just ‘cause I like you don’t mean I don’t got my eye on you.”

There’s something in the way he says it, in the snarl at the end of his words, that makes Beth certain he thinks _she’s_ the threat, between the two of them. Her and Daryl. She’s not sure how to feel about that. 

It doesn’t feel great, anyway.

In theory that _is_ what she does - hunt, track, take lessons from Daryl on ways to attack a person, ways to get the upperhand, to be sneaky and smart about her survival. In theory. 

In practice it’s something different. The woods call to her, and Daryl does, too. The way he moves, the way he talks, the way he says things without using his words. The way he looks at her and it feels like the world is opening up, shifting someplace new. She’s changed, she knows it, but she thinks maybe Daryl is changing too, and not many people would notice it, but Merle probably does. There is something dangerous about that, about having the power to make a person different. She understands where Merle is coming from.

She ducks her head away from the warning in his gaze, uncomfortable with him and the song playing across the room, and nearly startles when the seat next to her scrapes across the floor, Daryl plopping down beside her. He catches her gaze, and she has to fight a blush as Nina croons.

_I put a spell on you, because you’re mine._

“Need a drink?”

Either he hadn’t heard Merle’s words to her, or he’s doing a very good job of not thinking about them. 

“Oh. Um. Maybe not. I uh...I didn’t do too well the last time I drank.”

Something shifts in his gaze before he darts his eyes away from her, shooting Merle an almost warning look as the man opens his mouth to speak. They hold eye contact for a long, tense moment, before Merle slowly eases his shoulders back, jaw snapping shut. “One drink ain’t gonna kill ya,” he finally mutters, still eyeing Daryl like he finds him to be extra confounding tonight. “I’ll even get it for ya m’self. Like a real high class gentleman.” Before she can respond, before she can bother to tell him whether or not she wants anything, he pushes away from the table, chair squeaking across the floor, and stands, stomping over to the bar without a word.

The feeling of being left out of a conversation digs at Beth, but the brothers hadn’t said a word to each other. She sits in silence for a while, listening to the song switch over in the record player, this one heavier, more sultry, pressing in on her a little more. 

“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” Daryl says, bumping at her shoulder, and Beth turns to look at him, her confusion and discomfort falling away a bit. 

“Probably ‘cause you still don’t know how to invite anyone anywhere. ‘Goin’ to the tavern tonight’ ain’t exactly the same as ‘Gee Beth, sure would be nice to see ya.’”

He snorts, shoulders pulling in as he watches her. She takes a moment to study him - clean, collared shirt without any holes, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hair swept back from his face, beard trimmed close - she’d seen him this morning and he certainly hadn’t looked this put together. Not that he’s really all that fancy - his jeans still have a hole in the knee to match hers, his boots are scuffed and caked in mud, the dirt under his fingernails is still present. She kinda misses his vest, but doesn’t mention it. 

“Still came,” he says, instead of ribbing her for the incredibly poor imitation. 

She smiles, watches him as he watches the poker game going on in the corner. “Yeah, I guess I’m learnin’ how to speak Dixon.”

“Ha ha.”

Merle returns with a glass full of clear liquid, and Daryl shoots him a glare. “Jesus, you tryin’ to make her blind?”

“Just gettin’ a lady a drink, bro.”

“Get somethin’ else.”

He seems fairly adamant, but Beth is curious now, and incredibly unused to Daryl babying her. She doesn’t like it. It feels a bit like a challenge, honestly, and Daryl should know by now that she’s stubborn as a damn mule. She swipes the glass from Merle and takes a swig without thinking.

Dear _lord_ , does it burn.

Her throat on fire, she sets the glass down and fights back a cough, wincing at the taste of it on her tongue - Merle barks out a laugh and slings himself back into his chair, still chuckling as Beth glares up at him. 

“That’s _disgustin_ ’.”

“Second round tastes better,” Daryl mutters around his own drink, seemingly satisfied that she isn’t actually goin’ blind, and Beth takes another sip, just a little one this time. 

And he’s wrong, there’s no way it tastes any better, but Beth’s pretty sure her taste buds have gone numb, so in a way she guesses he’s kinda right. He looks a bit grumpy about it, but there’s a quirk to his lip like maybe it’s still kinda funny. She pokes at his ribs, smiles, ignores the way Merle is watching them both, and takes another drink.

\------

She likes Glenn. She does. She doesn’t know him all that well, but he’s been around a while now, and he loves Maggie, and he’s a good man, as far as she can tell.

She doesn’t know him all that well, though. It’s not really his fault - he’d started seein’ Maggie two months after her Daddy died, and Beth hadn’t exactly been in a great place, then. Hadn’t been in a great place for a long time after that, either.

She made Maggie uncomfortable, back then. Acting out in her way, picking fights, disappearing for half a day just to get away from everything. Maggie had gone the other way, latching on to the people in her life she cared about. Except for Beth. She’d taken to avoiding Beth, and Beth knows it was mostly to keep them from really laying into one another, from picking at the pieces of each other they knew better than anyone else until there was nothing left to salvage of their relationship. 

By extension she hadn’t seen much of Glenn, in the early days of their relationship, and by the time she’d started to get her head on straight Maggie and Glenn had already turned into MaggieandGlenn. 

She also thinks it necessary for him to understand that what she gets up to while he and Maggie are off doin’ whatever it is they do is none of his damn business.

“I mean, what do you guys talk about out there? He isn’t the best conversationalist, is he?”

Beth stares at him across the table. Lately he’s been spending more and more time at the house, tending the garden with Maggie and learning more about the fields they work in and maintain. Beth tries not to feel like he’s encroaching, tries not to feel like he’s purposely working towards becoming the new head of house. She knows he doesn’t mean to, knows he’s just trying to find new ways to connect with the girl who stole his heart.

Still. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like he wants to take up a spot Beth isn’t willing to give up just yet.

“We talk plenty.”

“Yeah, but about what? Seriously, I want to know. What does a guy like that even have to talk about with someone like you?”

There it is. It’s what he’s been working towards all through dinner, and maybe he isn’t alone in his sentiment, if the guilty look Maggie is shooting her is anything to go by. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Glenn looks caught out, but he pushes his way through it. “You’re just… very different from Daryl.”

She’s not, really, but there’s no particular way to explain the pull she feels to him, the understanding they have. The way the quiet moments seep into her mind and nest there, the way they can communicate without speech, the way he trusts her with the insides of his brain and the past he doesn’t talk about. The way she trusts him just the same. The way she wants him to know about that animal caged up inside her, knows he’ll like it just as much as he seems to like the woman she shows to the outside world.

“You and Maggie are pretty different too.”

They shoot each other a glance that makes Beth wish she hadn’t shown her cards so readily. She and Daryl are still very much friends, though the term only fits them very loosely. She doesn’t know exactly what they are, only in the past week or so they’ve been veering towards something a bit different than ‘friends’. All those old thoughts she’d have of him, all that nervous energy that wound her up, that’s still there, but it’s different, too. Before he’d been a mystery, a puzzle for her to solve, and she’s embarrassed by it, now. Like he was a challenge to figure out. He’s not that. It’s different, now, the way they can curl into each others space without causing a fuss, the way they speak to each other, the glances they shoot when they think the other one isn’t looking. She’s starting to get the suspicion that maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting for an opportunity to spend time together. 

She doesn’t know what it all means, to Daryl, but she knows that in whatever form of caring he’s taken with her, she’s important to him.

“It’s just weird,” Glenn tells her, like he has any idea what he’s talkin’ about. Like he knows her or Daryl well enough to say what is or isn’t normal. 

“Well you don’t gotta be concerned about Daryl. I know what I’m doing.”

Her sister gives her a dubious look, but they carry on with dinner without another word.

\------

She’s got no idea what she’s doin’. 

There’s something there, gnawing at the edges of her mind, poking at her like it’s some kind of revelation, but whatever it is she can’t quite wrap her mind around it. In the course of the summer she’s changed, she knows it and so does everyone else, but what she’s turning into, who she is now, she doesn’t have it nailed down. And she can’t quite fathom what her relationship with Daryl is. He’s so much different than anyone else she’s ever met, his feelings trapped under a lifetime of bad luck and questionable decisions. As well as she’s come to know him, there are pieces of himself buried so deep she’s not sure she’ll ever get to see them. 

And she’s terrified if she tries to draw them out he’ll shut her out completely. They trust each other because they know where to draw the line, and if Beth crosses that line she has a feeling she’ll lose the way things are now. 

At this point she can pretty firmly say that Daryl enjoys her company. She’d be stupid not to acknowledge that as fact. He seeks her out, makes it a point to inject his own thoughts into the conversations that had been a little one-sided at the outset of this...whatever it is. 

They’ve got a give and take. Beth just wonders sometimes what it is she’s giving Daryl.

\------

“How come no one ever calls _me_ Mr. Dixon?” Merle asks one day as she and Daryl are returning from a morning hunt. Daryl’d been in a talkative mood, all morning - at least talkative for him, anyway, snarkin’ back at her their entire hike, his parsed words flowing into full sentences as she goaded him. 

Merle catches the tail end of her bratty response to a vague order Daryl is making, “Yes _sir_ , Mister Dixon,” she’d shot back at him, nearly running headlong into Merle as he appeared outta nowhere. He did that, Merle Dixon - he seemed like a big, lumbering block of dumbass redneck, but he was quiet, sneaky - liked to eavesdrop and spy and get the feel for a person without them knowing he was watching. He’s listened in on plenty a’ conversations Beth wishes he hadn’t, but he doesn’t really talk about them. Just stores them away for whatever it is he listens to ‘em for.

“Maybe if you ever behaved like a man, instead of an animal, people might start thinkin’ to.”

“I am a fine upstanding gentleman of this community, I’ll have you know. Dumb fuckers wouldn’t know a real man if it fucked ‘em in the face.”

“Be still my beatin’ heart.”

“Girl, one’a these days someone’s gonna take you to task ‘bout that mouth’a yours. You got everyone fooled, thinkin’ you’re such a sweet thang, but I know the truth. You got a foul mouth and a dirty mind.”

“I’ve been learning from the very best.”

He grins, at that, pattin’ his stomach like he’s proud of it. 

There’s something about being here that makes her feel comfortable - peaceful, almost, though not in the way most people would think. There’s a thrumming in her blood and her heart beats half a step too soon, but it’s consistent, this hum of life, of understanding. She doesn’t feel like a square peg in a round hole - for once in her life she _fits_ , here, crackin’ wise at a man who could probably snap her in half if he felt like it, a man who most the people here moved to the other side of the street to avoid. There’s something strange about it, though. 

In the old world, she guesses Merle had probably slept around a lot, too high to care who she was ‘long as she had two tits to fit in his hands - he’d probably talked to them like they were slabs of meat, only slightly less important in the scheme of things. 

He’s a nasty, crabby, mean old asshole. But there’s a line. And maybe it’s mostly Daryl’s line - the one he follows to keep himself in check even when he feels the rage boiling up. But there’s a line - certain things he won’t say or do, not anymore, not with her - not really with anyone, anymore. She hasn’t seen Merle Dixon lit in at least two years. Hasn’t seen him start an argument with Rick just for the hell of it in… in a long damn time. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s just gotten used to caging the monster inside.

Maybe he’s changed.

She wants to say it’s probably not likely, but then she remembers herself, two years ago. Remembers the things she’s lost, and the way she kept going. She thinks maybe anything is possible if someone wants it enough.

She calls him Mister Dixon when she waves goodbye, and his smile splits wide across his face as he tells her to fuck right the hell off. 

She couldn’t say for sure - but she thinks it might have even been a genuine smile.

\------

“We got a fox in the henhouse.”

Daryl blinks, and Beth drops her gaze. She’s been watching him far more than the knots she’s supposed to be working on - eyes taking in the curve of his neck, the swing of his hair when he shakes his head in a vain attempt to get it out of his face (her mind works its way around the words stuck to her tongue, an offer to trim it for him, but they won’t shake loose from her lips, they just settle in and bring up images of her fingers sliding along his scalp), the way his fingers work over the bolts he’s fashioning while he tries to teach her how to tie a knot. She’d almost kicked him in the shin when he’d told her what he wanted her doing, and it was only his strangely gentle explanation of the various ways snares worked that had made her sit her ass down on the log next to him and let him teach.

Rick is looming over them both, now, looking entirely unsurprised to find them together, a small smile lighting his face and his thumbs tucked into his beltloops, and his words trickle into her ears as Beth tries to find anything to look at besides the color rising in Daryl’s cheeks.

“Fuck’s that s’posed to mean?”

Rick, apparently, had meant to be far more literal than either of them had taken it. 

“It killed two chickens last night.”

“What did?”

Oh, _Daryl_. Beth can’t decide most days how he feels about anything at all, least of all her, but he’s certainly aware enough of what they look like to the outside world. Little Beth Greene, sweet and kind and innocent, latching on to an older man with a mean streak a mile long and a horde of weapons. 

It’s nothin’ like that. Never was. But she knows how it looks. 

To other people.

Rick is either oblivious to Daryl’s discomfort or has decided to forge on ahead like he’s got no idea they’re having two different conversations. “You think you can track it? Take care of it?”

“Take care’a what now?”

“The fox, Daryl.”

Daryl blinks again. Stares at his fingers, cracked knuckles and dirt-caked fingernails. She can tell there’s a nervous tic in his leg he’s trying hard to control, his foot pushing hard against the ground to keep the knee from bouncing. 

“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll look into it.”

Rick blinks, this time. Surprised, maybe, by Beth’s inclusion in the task. Like it hadn’t even been something he considered, just a fact that Beth would be joining him. Beth feels it too, though she’s more careful about not spooking Daryl. He looks like he’s about ready to spring from his spot and take off into the forest, never to return. “I appreciate it,” he finally says. 

That seems to calm Daryl a bit, and Beth takes in Rick with new eyes. It’d taken Rick a while to warm to the Dixons - something Beth wasn’t supposed to know, but did anyway. Her daddy had never been one to keep secrets from her. But in the time since he’s taken a liking to Daryl - goes to him with a lot of the concerns he can’t get a good decision on from the council, takes his word into account and relies on him. He’s tried to get Daryl on the council a few times, but Daryl has never shown any interest in it. Rick has an understanding of the way Daryl works, the way he thinks and how to settle the whirring thoughts in his mind.

“Nice to see you, Beth,” Rick says, smiling at her in a way that feels different than he used to. 

“You too, Rick. How’re Lori and Carl?”

They talk for a bit, mostly about how Carl’s doin’ down at the schoolhouse - the push back he’s starting to give as he gets older and sees the boys his age leaving the school to work in the fields, to take up apprenticeships. 

Rick accidentally lets slip one other little tidbit of information. “Lori’s pregnant.”

It’s a surprise, even if maybe it shouldn’t be. They don’t have too many babies, here - people afraid of what this world has turned into, afraid of how much more dangerous it is to carry a child, deliver one, raise it in this world without modern technology or medicine. Her daddy had been the one to teach her how women took care of things like that now - taught her what plants to use and how to mix them and how to serve them. She’s made that tea for plenty of women over the years.

She’s made it for Lori plenty of times, too. 

Eventually Rick heads back out, and Daryl packs up the bolts and the toolkit he’s been working with. “Should probably head out now, before the trail gets too cold.” He pauses, glances back at her. “If you wanna come.”

She rolls her eyes at him, amused that he’s falling back into old patterns after all but declaring they were heading out together. He kicks at the ground, suddenly shy about it. “Nah, I think I’ll sit here and tie knots all day.”

“Probably should. you’re shit at it.”

He catches the frayed edges of the rope she tosses at him.

They find the trail easily, and Daryl has her lead, listening to her explanations on where they’re goin’ and why. There’s a thrill of exhilaration in it, in Daryl trusting her not to lead them astray, and she falters once or twice, waits for him to jump in and take over, but he never does - makes her sort it out for herself. There’s nothing condescending in it either, just a knowledge that eventually she’ll come to it. 

This is the thing Maggie and Glenn won’t ever understand properly. The thing that makes it easy for her to make mistakes, to fall back a bit before she comes to the right conclusion. They think Daryl’s rough and hard and mean, but they don’t know this gentle side of him. 

Half an hour in she brings up the conversation with Rick. “Gonna have a new baby around town,” she says, and he grunts. She glances sideways at him. “You ever thought about having kids?”

He rolls his tongue over his teeth like he thinking about how to properly explain the thoughts in his head. Like he’s not sure she’ll like the answer. “Never wanted ‘em. Don’t think I’d exactly be father of the year.”

The part he leaves unsaid - _not with the way he grew up_ \- makes her heart clench and weep. He’s so wrong about it, so wrong to think he wouldn’t be great, but she knows its not something to bring up here and now. 

“Pretty sure my dad thought the same thing, the first time he ever held Maggie. Said as much, once. He used to drink, you know? Like his dad. But he turned it around. Made a new path for himself. Didn’t have to be his own daddy.”

Daryl is quiet for a very long time, trailing behind her as they move through the trees, and she’s surprised when he speaks up again.

“He was a good man. Your dad. One’a the best I ever knew.”

She debates for a long time whether or not to say the words on the tip of her tongue, but after a while it’s too much for her to bear.

“He thought the same of you.”

\------

They find the burrow without much trouble, nestled in below an old willow tree with sagging branches. There’s not much happening, there, and after a while of watching Daryl taps at her shoulder like he’s thinking of trying something else. 

That’s when she sees them. Flitting across the meadow behind the willow, a vixen and three kits, snarling at each other and play fighting while the vixen watches on. Something clenches in her as she feels Daryl still beside her. After all that talk of babies, after the way he’d reacted to her comment about her daddy - she feels raw and tired and joyful all at the same time. 

They watch the little leash as they frolick and fight with each other, and Beth feels something rush up in her, some nervous need to stop whatever it is they’re about to do. 

“Daryl,” she intones quietly, curling a hand around his shoulder, close to where he has a hand on the strap of his bow. 

He hums, something low and deep and understanding. He knows exactly what she’s about to say.

“She’s just tryin’ to survive, same as us. Take care of her own.” His limbs are still loose, and she can tell he’s got about as much desire to see this fox dead as she does. “Don’t you think that’s beautiful?”

His eyes dart to hers, hold her gaze steady for a long moment, and then slide across to the vixen who seems to have heard them, if the pull of her ears and the careful way she’s sniffing the air are anything to go by. She barks at the kits, who all fall into line with minimal fuss. She knows if Daryl wanted he could shoot her down right now before they ever made it to their den. 

“Gonna have to fix the fuckin’ fences,” Daryl tells her instead. 

“I’ll help.”

He shakes his head at her, then, eyes following the dart of the leash into the roots of the tree. 

“C’mon. Gonna have to think up a good damn lie to tell Rick. I ain’t tellin’ him you got all sentimental on me.”

“Who’d believe you, anyway?”

He pushes at her shoulder with an open palm, and she grins up at him. 

She’d believe it. Maybe she’s the only one, but she’d believe it without a second thought.

\------

They usually hold market in the town square, but it’s gettin’ cold out, wind blowing hard and frost settling into the branches of trees - when it gets chilly like this, they move indoors, setting up stalls in the dreary old husk of what had once been some big chain hardware store. It’d been picked clean twice over before any of them had ever decided to settle the land surrounding it, and they’d just left it for a while, the empty shelves getting rusty and the walls crumbling in a bit around the empty space where sliding glass doors had once been cleaned twice a day by underpaid workers. They’d moved out the shelves years ago, emptied it out and left it that way so that they could keep a good economy running the whole year round.

Maggie takes the same spot she always has, right in the middle of things - tucked off away from the entrance to the place, but not so far that it’s a hike to get to them. She spends half her day talking off their neighbors ear, and Beth spends it people watching.

Carol comes by, grins wide when she sees the squash they’d picked that morning - they’re huge this year, bigger than Beth ever remembers them being, and they’d sprouted quick and even all season long. They’ve probably got another month left before those stop growing. 

Beth talks to her for a bit, keeping her eye on the mill of people wandering up and down the haphazard lanes, asks her how it’s going with the kids she teaches in the tiny schoolroom they’d built up a few years ago, tries to avoid asking a single question remotely related to Daryl Dixon. He comes up anyway. It’s funny that she went almost four years without ever really mentioning him, and now the whole town seems to want to know her thoughts on the man. 

Carol, at least, is kinder than most of them ever bother to be.

“You’ve been spending some time down at the forge, haven’t you?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“I hope Merle’s not giving you any trouble.”

“I can handle his grumpy ass,” she tells Carol, and Carol just smiles, a small little thing that curls her lips as she bites down on the bottom one. It’s not the condescending smile Beth’s come to expect, and Beth takes a moment to be grateful once again for her. She sees more than most folk. Understands it with a clarity most people don’t bother with.

“Daryl says you’re getting pretty good with a crossbow.”

It hadn’t struck her ‘til then, that Daryl might actually talk about her with other people. That he might bring it up in conversation, that he might even say she’s doing well. It’d never seemed like a possibility. She wants like hell to turn the other way, because she’s certain she’s blushing, now, and she doesn’t want Carol to mistake it. This isn’t some stupid crush, where his friend mentions he’s been talking about her and she gets embarrassed about it, wants to know what he said or how he said it. This is bigger than that. Not only had he mentioned her - talked about her with one of the few people he ever cares to talk to anyway - but he’d praised her in the process. Praised her skill. Something he’d taught her, and he’d talked to someone else and told them she was doing well. 

It feels bigger than a stupid crush. More earth shattering. Only the ground doesn’t move and her knees don’t wobble and crack. The world just tilts on it’s axis a bit, right where Beth is standing, and no one but her seems to feel it. 

It meant something that Carol knew about what they did out there in the forest. 

She’s still trying to figure out exactly what that something is when she notices him skulking off in the corner by the entrance. No game today, she guesses, or else he’d have been here earlier, but he’s got a little basket clutched in his palm and is eyeing the mess of people milling about like he’s trying to size each and every one of them up.

She knows it weirds people out, knows most people find it intimidating, but Beth thinks its kinda cute. Endearing, the way he tries to understand people, learn about them without ever having to learn how to talk to them. If she’s shit at knots, he’s worse with people, and sometimes she wants to tell him to just practice at it. Maybe that’s what she’s for. _Practice_.

The thought churns uncomfortable in her belly, but she dashes it away as Maggie slides away from their table to go chase down Lori Grimes. Daryl pushes himself off the wall a moment later and heads towards her, and she watches him all the way - the set of his shoulders, the swing of his hair, the gentle tread and the roll of his body. Whenever she sees him like this she conjures up thoughts of a big cat on the prowl, of the shifting shoulders and the careful eyes. 

She tries not to think too hard on what the hell he’s prowlin’ for. Seems like probably he doesn’t know either.

“Hey,” she says when he finally makes his way to her, tryin’ like hell to look like he’d just wandered over, and hadn’t made a beeline for her the moment he didn’t have to deal with her sister. 

“Hey.” 

She holds her dopey smile for a while, waiting for the uncomfortable roll of his shoulders when she looks at him too long, only it doesn’t come. 

“Whatchya got?”

He blinks at her, and she nods to the little box he’s holding oh-so-carefully. 

When he tilts them to show her, her eyes go wide. 

“Where the hell did you get those? No one’s been able to grow them all year!”

He shrugs, like it’s no big deal that he’s carrying around a box full of bright, ripe strawberries. He had to have traded a month’s worth of forge-work for them - when there were strawberries around there was enough to sell by the bucketload, but she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been able to keep a single plant alive this year. 

It’s a small box, enough for a snack but not enough for jam or preserves, and Daryl shuffles a bit as she waits for some response. “Can have ‘em, if you want. Don’t even like ‘em that much.”

That’s a damn lie. If there’s one thing she’s always noticed about Daryl, it’s a sweet tooth he tries to hide like it’s a fatal flaw. She’s seen him eat an entire pie, straight outta the pan, standing in the middle of market before. 

“We could share them.” 

She’s not sure exactly what game he’s playin’ at, or even if he realizes what he’s doing. Daryl seems like mostly he just goes with the flow and hopes he doesn’t fuck up. He definitely hadn’t expected ‘ _we could share_ ’. 

There’s that shrug again. She has to bite back a grin at that - there’s a predictability to the way he responds to things, and she’s getting real good at reading him. 

“Meet me after we close up. We’ll have a picnic, or something.” She’s already thinking of what she’s got at home, the small bag of cane sugar she’s been hiding away for a special occasion. This seems like a good a time as any to pull it out. 

“I don’t picnic.”

“Fine, we’ll sit in the meadow and brood like big tough men. I won’t even bring a blanket. Get dirt on my ass and everything.”

He smiles, at that. Tips the box towards her. 

She shakes her head at him. “No, you gotta bring the box. I gotta bring all the manly stuff. Huntin’ knife, slab a’ uncooked meat. Maybe I’ll even steal a cigarette or two.”

“Shut up.”

“You started it,” she tells him, grinning like a fool. He looks like he’s having a hard time not grinning back. 

“And I’m finishing it too. Not sure I wanna share my strawberries with someone who can’t stop sassin’ me.”

She grins at him. “I’ll see you in a few hours?”

He grunts, nods. Kicks carefully at the leg of the table, lingering for a moment. “You still got that guitar?”

It’s been years since she played it out in public, so she’s surprised to hear him mention it, but she nods all the same. 

“Should bring it. Ya know. ‘f we’re havin’ a picnic.”

There’s a reason she doesn’t play anymore. A reason she doesn’t sing. And she knows if she told him she didn’t want to, he’d drop it and never mention it again. But there’s something in his nervous shuffling that makes her stare at him in consideration for a moment. 

“Yeah. Okay.”

He nods once, firm, and spins away, skulking back out the door from where he’d come. 

Beth makes her excuses with Maggie and ditches out an hour early to grab all the fixin’s for a proper picnic.


End file.
